Today is Portugal Day. Please take some time to celebrate our heritage, our culture, our unique crafted and natural landscapes, our beautiful people. Call your friends, spread the news, open a bottle of precious Portuguese Wine. We are small and rare but still produce half billion bottles every year. Lucky you.
The French call it Terroir but the American Bill Ryan preferred to talk about “somewhereness” when referring to the elusive combination of micro-climate, soil and aspect that lifts one wine above another. To 12 makers of wine in Ontario, somewhereness is revealed in the mysterious time capsules we know as bottles of wine. As ethereal gifts of a carefully tended location and a moment in time, each is imprinted with a vineyard’s sense of place, its soil, climate, seasons, vintage variations — and its maker’s methods. Marketing, I would say. By the way, we do have a Portuguese word – Terrunho – but I do think we have only some few terroirs: the Port and Madeira territories, timid Colares and Vinho Verde Alvarinho appellations. Now, a wine snob has the accurate notion for Terroir: place worthy of a visit, worth being seen by fellow snobs and worth lying to friends about having some cellared bottles, certainly worth knowing the history, ownership, winemakers and pets. Mandatory window shopping and tasting attendance, boldly intake of empty labeled bottles and refill Grand Cru for fake Grand You, naughty snobs…
Wine snobs are absolutely right. All wine producers do defend their own Terroir, for all geographically referenced and approved wine is a natural product coming from somewhere. So does somewhereness stand for Terroir in English? No! I would vote for 1stgrowthness. Difficult and creative? So what? A slight snobbery surplus but a lot of sense added.
Recently arrived from Québec, where I represented Portugal in the largest North American wine competition –Selections Mondiales des Vins Canada – I share with you the experience of wine service. Instead of students from schools of hospitality and tourism, sommeliers from the best and most prestigious restaurants Quebecoises served on each of the 11 tables of the jury. They were mastered by sommelier Philippe Lapeyrie, TV star, author of several books on wine and wine culture in Canada, where consumers already drink 23 liters per capita each year. The enthusiasm and dedication of this generation of young sommeliers is connected to overwhelming achievements: this year, the ASI contest of the best sommelier of the world, held in Japan, led, for the first time in history, a sommelière to one of the podium places: Véronique Rivest is the first woman to achieve the title of 2nd best sommelier in the world. Canadian, of course!
See more: http://w-anibal.com/media/pdf/10_3LiquidosW.pdf
Top#10:
| Cais da Vila | 5000 Vila Real | 259351209 |
| Castas e Pratos | 5050 Peso da Régua | 254323290 |
| Cepa Torta | 5070 Alijó | 259950177 |
| D.O.C. | 5110 Armamar | 254858123 |
| Douro In | 5050 Peso da Régua | 254098075 |
| Flor d Sal | 5370 Mirandela | 278203063 |
| Geadas | 5300 Bragança | 273324413 |
| Maria Rita | 5370 Romeu | 278939134 |
| Museu dos Presuntos | 5000 Vila Real | 259326017 |
| O Abocanhado | 4840 Brufe TBR | 253352944 |
